Monday, January 29, 2007

Sorry for the lapse in posting last week. Jim passed on his germs and I spent the week congested, sniffling and otherwise feeling sorry for myself. We ate less-than-exciting fare, at least to look at.

What's more fun when you're sick than ice cream? Not much, I'd say. This was a slap-together sundae I made when my throat was sore and it hit the spot. Vanilla soy ice cream with mango sorbet, half a banana, a sprinkling of hemp seeds, walnuts, warm up frozen raspberries and, of course, warm chocolate sauce! Yum. I could go for another right now... if I hadn't eaten all the ice cream already.

Not 2 minutes after I mentioned to Jim that I wanted to make something for dinner involving pasta, spinach and mushrooms I happened upon Ken's recently resurrected blog. His dish du jour on Friday was a lasagna recipe from Susan's blog. Perfect! I tried out brown rice lasagna noodles for this dish. They were good and tasted like regular old lasagna noodles. We enjoyed it with whole wheat bread. I love lasagna because of the leftovers. A whole dish of lasagna can last 2 people quite awhile!

Tonight I wanted to play with a new food item I recently got: black lentils. They are also called beluga lentils because they apparently look like caviar when they are cooked. Having never seen caviar, I'll have to assume that this is true. I had a hard time finding anything about them online and very few recipes, certainly nothing that jumped out at me. So I decided to make a risotto with lentils on top. But then I thought that rather than using pretty nutritionally empty arborio rice, why not use quinoa? I'm always trying to figure out good ways to get quinoa into Jim, so this seemed as good as any.

I also had a delicata squash laying around, so I used it to add a layer of flavor, provide some color and give me the creaminess needed for real risotto. With the squash roasting in the oven, I cooked the black lentils in one pot, 1 cups worth and in another large pot I sauteed a diced onion with a little olive oil. I added 3 cloves of minced garlic and toasted the rinsed quinoa (1 1/2 cups) until lightly toasted, then added 3 cups of water and a bay leaf. While the quinoa and lentils cooked, I removed the skin from the roasted delicatta and mashed it up. Then it got processed it in the food processor with a little water, to make it creamier.

Once the quinoa was done, I removed the bayleaf and added 3 tablespoons of EB to it along with the pureed squash. Adding the sqaush right at the end preserved the savory flavor of the risotto while adding a sweet layer, complimented by the earthiness of the lentils. It was really fun to make, being a new dinner idea and some new ingredients to me, and it was quite tasty. We had it with a salad and some bread.

Now, I'm just a little kid a heart. I love making crafts, playing games and collecting toys as much as the next 7-year-old. So much that when baking nostalgia kicked in, I decided to buy an Easy-Bake Oven.

The EB Oven was one of my favorite toys as a kid, especially because I didn't grow up with a mom who cooked or baked. My mom heated things up and got drive-thru. So this little oven was not only a favorite toy for me, it was a mother stand-in as well. ;)

Veganizing recipes for it was a cinch. The problem, however, was that they are manufactured so poorly that they cannot be serviced because they want you to get a new one instead. So, one small cake in, I have a brownie batter overflow. Thinking we can take it apart and fix it, Jim (a.k.a. "The Man Who Can Fix Anything") busts out his tools. Jim has worked on American, Japanese and European cars and has more tools than the average Joe. But the Easy-Bake Oven isn't meant to be taken apart and has special proprietary screws and parts, so that even my own personal handy man was stumped. We tried to clean it the best we could, but the next night, halfway through a double layer "little cake", as Jim is calling them, it died. 2 days old, a little dried brownie batter and the damn thing died!

But there is always a silver living and in this case there was a great solution: the toaster oven. We discovered that in 6 minutes we can make a double layer little cake using the little pans. This is becoming quite popular with us because the clean up is a breeze, it's fast and it makes just enough, with no tempting leftovers to pick at. Now Jim keeps going on and on about little cakes, so I guess I'll just have to keep making them. :)

Chocolate double layer little cake with a warm chocolate ganache filling and a drizzled glaze topping. Jim, who is not a chocolate hound like I am, gobbled this up and asked for 4 of them for his birthday. Maybe I'll try making a grown-up sized one instead.

Can I tell you how fun it is to be this big giant playing with little pans? I'm so making Bindhi a birthday cake this summer... they're cat-sized!

Did you use a certain recipe for your cakes??I got an Easy Bake when I was in high school from a friend as a joke. But I'd totally open it up to get the little dishes to use in my toaster oven. Mini cakes would be great!

Those "little cakes" are so cute!I bought black lentils a little while ago and also struggled to find any recipes to use them in. I ended up throwing some in to chili. It turned out pretty good, although a little dark and murky. The remainder are languishing in the cupboard in the hope that I can find a better recipe for them...

ahhh cute little cakes!My honey brought me back a can of black lentils from trader joes once, I think I just used them in a recipe that called for brown lentils.. I thought they were good. Kinda works out well, because my little ones don't like brown lentils.

About 985,000 Easy-Bake Ovens sold since last May have been recalled because children can get their hands or fingers caught in the oven's opening, which poses an entrapment or burn hazard.

The ovens are manufactured by Easy-Bake, a division of Pawtucket-based Hasbro Inc. The company has received 29 reports of children getting their fingers or hands caught in the product, including five reports of burns.

The recalled plastic ovens are purple and pink. They resemble a kitchen stove with four burners on top and a front-loading oven. "Easy Bake" is printed on the front of the electric toy, while "Hasbro" and model number 65805 are stamped into the plastic on the back. The recall does not include Easy-Bake Ovens sold before May 2006. Toys "R" Us, Wal-Mart, Target, KB Toys and other retailers nationwide sold the toy from May 2006 through February 2007.

For a free retrofit kit, call the company at 800-601-8418. For more information, visit http://www.easybake.com or http://www.cpsc.gov .